hair up, eyes forward
by Xairathan
Summary: It's amazing how easily the world shifts. Mari learns this the hard way. Set between the events of manga Chapter 97 and the start of the original series.


"Y'know, you wouldn't get trounced so badly if you stopped holding yourself back."

Mari winces as she dabs ointment on her swelling eye, which is already changing color to a nauseating shade of violet. "I'm not holding back," she protests. Her long hair swings in front of her face, and she brushes it away impatiently, though it takes more than one try to do so.

"And the way you fight!" Mari's companion leaps off her seat and marches over to her, snatching away the jar of ointment and applying it to Mari herself. "I don't get you, Makinami. You have your hair up whenever I see you, but never when you're in the ring, and if you aren't wearing your glasses when you fight, then your vision must be shit!"

"I'm fine without-"

"Bullshit!" The plastic container slams into the back of Mari's locker and rattles around on the bottom. "Bet you can't even tell me how many fingers I'm holding up." Even from several feet away, Mari hears the sigh. "Look, I don't know anything about you, or why you fight or why you signed up here, but if you're serious about fighting, you've gotta change it up. Get goggles or contacts, put your hair up, get aggressive." An affectionate pat musses Mari's hair, and the 17-year-old makes a sound of complaint. "Otherwise, you'll keep ending up like this. And you've got too pretty a face to have it all bruised up. Think about it, okay?"

The slamming of the door drowns out Mari's prolonged groan. "That's easy for you to say." Out of the corner of her eye she sees a double of herself mimic the motions of her lips. Watching herself in the mirror mounted on the inside of her locker, she weaves her fingers through her hair, parting it into a matched pair of ponytails. The motions are automatic after a year and a half, but still her hands tremble as she fumbles with the hair ties.

Voices echo down the corridor outside, spilling into the locker room as Mari hastily throws on her pink sweatshirt and slides her glasses into place. Her reflection returns her gaze in the instant before the locker slams shut, and Mari, brushing past sweaty flesh and empty victors, finds herself in the crowded London streets.

Mari's flat is a five-minute walk from the gym, and its halls are unsurprisingly empty. Friday night translates to 'party night' in the language of university students, and those flatmates who would normally be shouting in the rooms next to Mari's are all out drinking. The resulting silence welcomes Mari home, settling around her like a comfortable mantle and following her along the rote path that she takes- to the mailboxes, to the stairs, to room 302.

At the threshold of Mari's apartment, the cold of the London night meets Mari's preference of warmth. The currents of clashing air buffet the letters carelessly tossed at the kitchen counter. Several stall and flop to the floor like displaced fish. Their handler pays no mind, busying herself with filling the water boiler and pulling down various boxes, all meticulously labeled.

Only when the water has been set to boiling and the radio is chattering away with its classical music does Mari remember the mail. The few envelopes that made it to the counter are quickly opened and discarded, and their counterparts on the floor are headed the same way when something attracts Mari's eye.

Everything is as Mari remembers it: the distance between the line and dot on the 'i', the slant of the letters, the almost computer-like precision of the punctuation. Squealing with joy, Mari leaps from her crouch on the floor, her hands fisting on the sides of the frail paper upon which is etched her happiness. Even the throbbing pain of her defeat at the gym is washed away by this euphoria.

Excited eyes fixate on the first line and speed off, devouring the rest greedily. The heater clicks off, having complete its set task; the temperature drops several degrees, or at least Mari perceives it has. The letter trembles. Reaching for the wall with one hand, she re-reads Yui's message, every period marked by a shuddering creak of hardwood beneath her feet.

Fingers grasp into emptiness. Tossing the letter aside, Mari grabs onto the wall, feeling along it for the light switch. Though her black eye has not swollen shut, she cannot see out of it, nor out of her other eye: they only process blurs through foreign lenses, and what they are telling her cannot be true at all. As the light comes on, Mari throws herself into the bathroom and at the sink, wrenching at the taps. The water goes from room temperature to steaming in seconds, splashing over Mari's hands. Scalding droplets flung at her face fail to rouse her from what must be a dream.

Yui Ikari, marrying Gendo Rokubungi? It has to be a lie.

Anyway, if Yui wanted to contact Mari, she would have used email, right? Willfully omitted is the fact that Mari had never contacted Yui with her new university email, only sending her address- by air mail. At the time, she had not wanted to hear more about Gendo Rokubungi, though she had told herself her absence was keeping a distraction away, out of both her life and Yui's.

The water refuses to go any hotter. Her patience wearing thin, Mari shoves her head under the faucet, gasping as the liquid traces the parting of her hairline, runs down her forehead and the tip of her nose. Her memory helpfully reminds her that it is, according to science, impossible to read in a dream.

'Dear Mari' suddenly becomes 'fuck you'.

Jerking away from the sink, another Mari meets the eyes of the original's. She stares back mindlessly, feigning shock. Mari Makinami stares back, her breath coming in labored heaves, as she sees not her clone, but the girl who had been born one summer afternoon in Kyoto. That was the girl Yui was inviting; she was but an illusion, one that Mari had followed in blind complacency.

At 17, she was just a schoolgirl, and that was all she would ever be. A schoolgirl who belonged to someone paired to Gendo Rokubungi. A schoolgirl with a black eye because she was too short-sighted to see the punches coming. A schoolgirl unafraid to fight back.

The iridescent surface shatters, shards of it digging into Mari's knuckles. She turns away, plucking them out and dropping them to the floor like bloody rose petals: she loves me not, she loves me not. With them go her delusions, gone and now exposed to raw reality. Trembling hands remove the red frames from Mari's face and set them atop the couch for two, that has only ever been occupied by one. The little reflection in the lenses reminds Mari who she is, refuses to leave her alone. Even Yui's last gift cannot console her.

When the coffee table flies into the wall, Mari looks around for the culprit. The one who flipped it looks her in the eye, a deranged smile on her face, one hand tucked into her pink sweatshirt and the other covered in streaming blood. _Why did you do that? _she asks. Static answers her as the radio tips over, its antenna snapped off by the chair that lands beside it. Mari finds herself in the kitchen. Someone is screaming, howling; the opened letters are flung to the floor in a spasm of rage. Boiling water pours out after them, pooling around white socks and seeping into the fabric. The screaming doesn't become any more or less pained.

The empty dish rack leaves its station by the sink and gravitates toward the row of picture frames next to the television set. They careen to the side and the floor in equal numbers, their glass covers cracking, shattering, falling to pieces. An image of two brunettes topples onto a quarter-sized pool of blood. The screams take on a hoarse tone, fading in and out with and merging with the static. Crimson trails open up along the cabinet doors; tea leaves fling themselves into the air and flutter down like rotted feathers from a massive, wounded beast that cannot help but bleed everywhere.

It's a testament to the tiles on the kitchen floor that they do not break during the onslaught, not a single one, not even the one that had an impromptu red paint job that refused to stay put. The spilled water starts to look like newly mixed cherry-flavored Jell-O. It creeps into Mari's white sweatpants, lying against the floor, tinting them a garish pink to match her sweatshirt.

The pain refuses to abate. Staggering to her feet, her legs aflame, Mari seeks the most base escape. Her hands find the finesse to operate the sliding-door latch. Glass yields to open air, and she lurches out toward it, letting it fill her aching lungs. The earth calls to her, it seems; it wants her when no one else does. The distance is only some thirty feet. On paper, it's a small amount. Damaged photographs and a pristine red frame watch as their owner begins a backward march, her eyes never deviating from their intended destination until her stomach jerks, and there is a sensation of falling.

The couch is there to catch Mari, easing her back against its softness. Angling to the side, her feet find purchase on the opposite armrest. Mari's glasses, shaken by all the chaos, tilt one inch too far and topple onto her stomach. The empty lenses stare into her eyes. In them she sees clarity; in them she sees truth.

Yui would be _disappointed. _

And as suddenly as the world broke, it rights itself. Mari finds herself staring at her hand, at the blood pooling between her knuckles. Her feet sting from any one of the hazards strewn around the room. It's a miracle the TV stands intact. Mari lifts her hand to her mouth and licks it, like a cat cleaning its paws. Iron. It seems the world is fixed, all but one thing.

Rising on shaking legs, Mari teeters down the hall to her bedroom and boots up the computer. As it warms up, she goes over her message in her head. She comes away with nothing, up until the moment her fingers ghost over the keys. Ignoring Yui's invitation, she instead types out a one-word reply: 'Congratulations!'. It will suffice. The task complete, her hands reach for her twin-tails. Her bloodied hands. The apartment is so very empty, Mari realizes. Alone in her room, the tears finally come streaming from one eye, oozing out the injured other. She moves her hands to her cheeks instead.

Between her blurry vision and the absence of her glasses, Mari mistakes the icon on her screen for a spinning globe, indicating a sent message. By the time she notices her drafts count has gone up by one, her courage is gone. Instead she pulls out her phone, punches in a number, and brings it up to her ear. The voice from the gym answers. "Makinami!"

"You, me. Gym at five. Tomorrow." Baring her teeth in a hungry smile, Mari adds, "I'll wear my glasses. And I'll put my hair up."

She hangs up without waiting for a reply and turns away from the computer screen, retreating down the hall and softly humming an old tune to keep herself occupied as she cleans.

From then on, Mari will not lose another fight. Her unsent message perishes in Second Impact, but still she continues to win, up until the day she once again sees Yui, when she comes roaring out to save her.

* * *

_Author's note: Why did I write this? I don't know. I wanted to write a mental breakdown of some sorts, and out came this._

_Title taken from my NJROTC days. Hair up, eyes forward, and that's how to get through inspections. And, apparently, life._

_X-posted to AO3, thanks to Anguish from Flight Rising for beta'ing for me. _


End file.
